3 gallon planted tank help?

[Rampion]

I have a 3 gallon tank that originally had a betta in it (he's been moved to a 10 gallon) and I'd like to convert it to a planted tank before restocking it with fish. There's a lot of advice for larger planted tanks, but the advice on 3 gallons is pretty scant, so I have a few questions. How strong does the light need to be? Do I need to add any CO2? What plants would work best (I'd like to heavily plant)?

NOTE: the tank is the 3.5 gallon betta flo from TopFin. The lights stopped working so I'm replacing the hood and the filter takes up a lot of room so I'm going to try to find something smaller.

 

[ZxC]

A single desk lamp with a "cool white" 13 or 23 watt compact fluorescent bulb would work good, should be medium ish light.

Excel/metricide can work as a carbon source, no need for CO2 (assuming you aren't planning it to be high tech)

What substrate are you using/would like to use?


Good plants would be:

Crypt lutea "hobbit"
Crypt parva
Crypt Wendtii brown / green
Dwarf sagitteria
Bacopa compact
Helanthium spp.
Java fern
Anbuias nana
Any moss

That should be a good start. Depending on the height of the tank, you could look into Ludwigia repens, Lloydiella, Rotala rotundifolia, Bacopa caroliniana too.

 

[Rampion]

What substrate are you using/would like to use?

I think I used something like CaribSea Eco Complete in my 10 gallon and that's what I was planning on using here.

I also use filtered spring water because my tap water is very hard (pH 8.7). I would install a reverse osmosis filter but I'm renting and the spring water isn't super expensive. I've been adding trace minerals to the water to make up for what is lost through the filtering process.